Online Dating!

Hi Everyone I know I promised to tell you about my 5 dates this week but I realised there was so much to tell before I got there,  you will have to wait another week to hear about them!

So  I will start with what happened after I put my profile up. As I mentioned in my last blog when I signed up online I was inundated with contact – which was great. Responding felt like a 2^nd job – I am not complaining and ha I know first world problems!

I have covered a lot about what guys do badly online in 11 Proven Ways to be Successful Online Dating  but will do a personalised recap of how I felt!

In this article I quoted a stat that 90% of singles are bored out of their brains online and from my experience I can totally understand why!!!

The thing with online dating is people have a certain amount of info on their profiles and when they send an email  they tell you the same info. Personally I love a great conversation that flows, oh  and funny is also good. Sending the same info doesn’t achieve this.

A lot of men would send me what seemed to be a bio of their lives containing way too much information about them, their  jobs, their interests and their families. They would all add at the end feel free to ask any question you might like. When you meet someone in the ‘real’ world you chat and you rarely tell the person everything about your life so I am not sure why people do this online.

I want to meet someone to know if I am attracted to them first, then there is plenty of time to talk about our lives. Personally there are only 2 questions I am interested in – how long they have been single and the age of their kids. A man who is newly single is rarely ready for a relationship and as my kids are grown up I am not interested in dating a guy with very young children as I have literally been there and done that.

The rule should always be if you wouldn’t do it in person don’t do it by text or email.

The next type of email I got a LOT was the – I don’t do this emailing back and forth – here is my number call me’. I had some who literally did this and when I didn’t text them I never heard from them again!  I HATE this approach it’s like you can’t even be bothered talking to me or making a bit of an effort. I get online dating is tedious but if you are a guy and want to achieve results this is a MUST. By increasing this skill you will increase the number of dates you go on.

Then of course I had the guys who simply said – ‘Hi how was your weekend. Fred’. 

All of the approaches I have mentioned are boring and lack imagination. None of them inspired me to meet the guys. Oh and then don’t get me started on the BAD pictures!!!

In my opinion it is essential to talk on the phone before meeting – you can tell a lot from a phone call. Also I couldn’t date someone whose voice I hated! This does save time.

There were a few conversations that started off well but then they gave me TOO much information. This simply put me off. In one case the guy said he hadn’t had a great Easter, so I asked him why. He responded by telling me it reminded him of his wife and marriage. He then went on to say he believed his wife could do with counselling. This was a clear sign to me he wasn’t over his  ex was a little bitter. Then he went on to say one of his teenage sons was problematic and took a lot of his time – I would have to be willing to put up with that. I am not sure why telling me this was necessary – it felt like he was putting up barriers. Giving this much information and honesty before meeting someone is a bad idea. You need to like someone to accept their ‘stuff’. So in this case there was no date as I felt like he had too much baggage.

I suggested to another man that we chat on the phone before meeting. He asked me if I had Skype or WhatsApp as he didn’t want to pay for a phone call. I couldn’t understand why in the day and age of phone plans that he would worry about the cost of a call. Guys don’t EVER do this. Needless to say I didn’t meet him.

My next convo was interesting. The guy asked to meet me on a Saturday night and said he assumed I would be driving as I wouldn’t want more than one drink, oh and he knew he would recognise me by my frock! I didn’t meet him – it felt like he was already telling me what to do.

So out of all of these conversations there were 4 guys who had a great approach. These guys chatted via email and it was fun to talk to them, then we had fun phone conversations that made me look forward to meeting them.

I will let you know how that went next week.